British Gala

World Premiere

Paul Andrew Williams/UK 2010/78 min

Imagine a low-budget British remake of Michael Haneke’s Funny Games, shorn of its unsettling metafictional examinations of audience complicity in screen violence, and you’ll have a good idea of what it’s like to sit through this tedious effort from writer/director Paul Andrew Williams. Troubled middle-class couple Christine (Rachael Blake) and Mike (Tom Butcher) have their home invaded by some youths who are there to wait the return of the couple’s son. Needless to say, things get rough, but the real victim here is the image of the working-class, who are presented as little more than a threat to the nice affluent couple we’re apparently meant to automatically empathise with. But even if, as seems to be the case with the filmmakers, your values are the product of Thatcherism, the lackluster pacing, dull characterisation and bland dialogue will still test the patience. Come the genuinely laughable conclusion, in which emasculated middle-class dad fights back, the only people in the audience able to bear the film will be those who believe The Daily Mail presents balanced journalism. You might argue that it’s meant as a realist portrait of ‘broken Britain’, but we’re not seeing any of the systemic reasons such ‘realism’ would warrant; we’re just seeing young black ‘hoodies’ beat up and rape the kind of people who, in Cameron’s words, “play by the rules”. This exploitative scaremongering is the last thing this country needs right now; the coalition are already taking money from welfare and spending it on more police.

Showing @ The Cameo Mon 21 Jun 19:45 and Fri 25 Jun 20:35